by Rachel Clark
“No,” he says without even turning around.
Again I want to argue, or at least demand an explanation, but this time I manage to control the impulse. He turns around after a few moments, gives me an approving sort of smile, and then goes back to making dinner.
“Can I help you with anything?” I quickly add the word “Sir” when he turns and raises an eyebrow.
“You can help by being quiet,” he instructs before he turns his attention back to the salad he seems to be making. The kitchen is already filled with the spicy smell of lasagna. I don’t know if it’s the store-bought kind or if he made it himself earlier, but it does smell delicious.
“Did you—” I begin to ask, but shut up the moment he puts the knife down and turns toward me. He doesn’t look unhappy, but I’m not sure I can interpret his actual mood.
He crosses his arms as he looks at me. Just looks at me. He doesn’t say a damn word, and I’m starting to fidget in my seat. Crap, considering the seat I’m sitting in—the saddle-shaped orgasm-inducing one I’ve used on more than one occasion thanks to Doug’s kinky orders—I probably shouldn’t be wriggling around, especially since I was just told to sit quietly.
I can feel the urge to hyperventilate, the nervous flutter in my stomach, the need to cover my race toward another panic attack with empty words into a conversation I’m no longer focused on. Shit.
“Stand up,” Doug orders me in a low, growly voice. Even just his instruction seems to settle me a little. “Lean over the bench.”
I do as he says, grunting softly when he places a hand between my shoulder blades and pushes my naked breasts harder against the cold marble. I lie there for only a moment before he steps past me and reaches into a cupboard that I know from experience contains all sorts of interesting toys. He slips something into his front pocket that I didn’t quite see, and I’m still trying to imagine what it might have been when he reaches for something else. The paddle he chooses already has me squirming, but the first hit leaves me howling in pain. Holy fuck.
Twice more he smacks me with the hard piece of wood before helping me to stand and then bodily lifting me back onto the stool. I hiss as my abused flesh touches the smooth wood.
“Better?” he asks as he uses his thumb to brush away the tears that continue to fall from my eyes. Suddenly wearing no makeup seems like a damn good idea. I nod, the sore bottom very easily dragging my attention back to the here and now. He stands back, folds his arms across his chest, and looks at me as if he can see every thought in my head. “I want you to explain why you feel the need to fill silence with words. It seems to be a habit you’re quite fond of.”
I shake my head. It’s not really a habit, is it? “I don’t really know why, Sir. It just feels like something I should do.”
“So you’re playing hostess?” he asks as he washes his hands and then goes back to preparing the salad.
“I don’t think so,” I say as possible explanations flit through my brain. “The silence just makes me uncomfortable, sort of.”
I know I sound like a scatterbrain, but it seems weird that I’m actually suggesting I’m not happy with silence. I don’t even play soft background music at work like some of the other accountants do. I like silence. I actually find it very calming. Just…not when other people are around? How strange.
Doug turns and gives me an assessing look. He glances at the timer on the oven.
“For the next twenty minutes I want you to not talk. Just concentrate and enjoy the comfortable silence between us. Embrace the idea of being in the same room with another person without actually speaking. Can you do that for me, little sub?”
I’m nodding even before I really absorb the meaning of his words. I want to please him. He asked me to do it, so I plan to get it right.
“This will help,” he says as he pulls that thing from his pocket and moves to wash it in the sink. My heart pounds heavily as I recognize the ball-gag. I’d noticed lots of subs wearing them when we visited the club, but I hadn’t been enamored by the thought. I’m not sure what’s worse—the idea of sucking on the ball like it’s some sort of pacifier, or gagging on the damn thing until I have drool dripping off my chin.
Thankfully, Doug doesn’t try to put it on me. He simply hands it to me and goes back to what he was doing. At first I wonder if he means for me to put it on myself, but since he didn’t actually tell me that, I’m content to just hold it in my hand. I suspect it is a tangible reminder and a warning of sorts—speak and I will end up wearing it.
I don’t plan to speak.
In fact for the next twenty minutes I not only manage not to speak, but I also manage not to wind myself toward a panic attack. It’s actually kind of nice not to feel the need to fill the silence. When it comes to friendly chatter, I suck at it anyway. In fact, by the time the buzzer goes off on the oven, I’m wondering why I even bother to strike up a conversation with some people.
I really do need to work on my social skills. My entire adult life seems to be awkward conversations with people who don’t really want to talk and boring conversations with people who don’t want to listen. And somehow I’ve missed the social “gene” that tells me how to cope, how to not talk when I don’t need to, and how to politely leave a conversation when I want to.
It’s certainly a skill I could have used the day nearly a month ago when Lisa was ranting about women’s rights.
Of course all of these quiet, meandering thoughts bring me to my absent best friend. It’s true in the past year or so that we haven’t seen each other very often, but we do speak almost every day on the phone. I smile at the clause Doug and I have written into my submissive’s training contract—half an hour each day is my time to speak to Lachlan. It cannot be denied for any reason, not even as a punishment for appalling behavior. It was the one thing I was determined to hold sacred, so I’d been almost surprised when Doug didn’t argue with me on it.
Lord knows he’d held fast on everything else.
I’m not sure what being able to continue talking to Lachlan each day means about mine and Doug’s relationship—such as it is. Technically he is a Dom training a sub, nothing more. Maybe I’m being very silly and more than a little naïve, but I wouldn’t have let him write sexual touching and full intercourse into a contract if I hadn’t felt some sort of connection to him. Perhaps the emotion is only on my side, but for now I choose to keep my illusions.
“Come on,” he says as he carries our dinner into the dining room. I’m very relieved to see that one of the chairs has a thick, fluffy towel covering the leather seat. He places the plates onto the table, helps me into my seat, and then sits down. He’s arranged the place setting at the corner of the large dining table, him at the end, me sitting at a right angle beside him. I’m close enough to touch him, but still able to see his face.
Considering that he leans over and caresses my breasts gently before asking me if I want salad, I think that’s the point. Until that moment I’d actually forgotten I was naked on the top half, too.
He grins at the soft moan that escapes me.
“Eat,” he orders. I nod and lift my knife and fork. It truly smells delicious. Even if he didn’t make this himself, it’s obvious that he knows how to pull together a decent meal. It makes my freezer full of microwave meals look rather pathetic, actually. We eat quietly for several minutes. Again I somehow manage to keep my inane chatter to myself. It’s actually quite liberating not to have to talk.
“How was your day at work?” he finally asks as if we’re having a normal meal together. I suppose it would be kind of normal if I wasn’t naked, wet, still just a simmer below horny as hell, and didn’t have my tits hanging out.
“Long.” I say the word with great feeling. It had been the longest damn day of my working life, especially that last forty-three minutes. He chuckles evilly, obviously well aware of why my day seemed never ending. “What did you do today?” I ask, trying to sound casual. I already know he had the day off work. He arranged more t
han two weeks’ vacation, invited me into his home, and agreed to train me as a submissive—surely someone willing to do all that feels a connection to the person they do it with.
“A bit of work.” He’s a very successful defense lawyer, so I suppose even when he’s on vacation there’s going to be stuff needing his attention. “Grabbed some groceries, did some toy shopping, teased a sub until she was good and mad.”
My breath jams in my lungs. Teased a sub? It hadn’t even occurred to me that he probably plans to continue playing with the subs at the BDSM club while he’s training me. It’s not expressly forbidden in our contract for him to continue on with his normal activities. Fuck. I’m working my way into a serious case of mad when he grins and asks, “How did you like the vibrating egg?” and I finally realize the sub he’s talking about is me.
Fucking hell. Scratch mad, I’m actually just nuts.
“I…um…” Apart from the fact that my brain is still going off on a tangent, I seem to be having great difficulty putting into words my feelings about one little vibrating toy. “It was…um…different.”
“Different, how?” he asks, obviously aware of my delaying tactics. Damn. My brain can work so fucking fast when it’s leading me into a panic attack, but suddenly my thoughts are like molasses.
“I suppose different as in…not really pleasurable, but not painful either. It was sort of irritating, but in a way that made me want more.”
“Did you touch yourself?” he asks with a smile. I suppose technically our contract hadn’t come into force until I stepped into this apartment, but it hadn’t actually occurred to me at the time. I’d been desperate to orgasm, but because Doug hadn’t been there to tell me what to do I hadn’t done it.
“No, because you weren’t…I mean I didn’t…You’re the only one allowed—”
I cut myself off as I suddenly realize the very big fall I could be heading toward. If my ability to orgasm is directly related to my Dom, what happens when he isn’t my Dom anymore? That great big ball of dread starts to sit in my stomach again. I’m shaking violently as panic builds inside me. I’m not even able to control my breathing. My immediate reaction is there, hanging out in the open, my ability to control myself in front of this man all but destroyed.
A hard grip on my chin brings my gaze up to his. “Where are you, little sub?” he asks evenly.
I shake my head as tears fill my eyes. How can I possibly explain my dependence on this man? Do I even want to? I’ve never let myself be so vulnerable in my life.
He pushes his chair away from the table, grabs my wrist, and hauls me facedown over his knee. I’m already feeling calmer with just the promise of a spanking. He rubs over the still-raw-feeling welts of the paddle he used earlier, but this is a far gentler caress than what I’d been expecting. He continues to move his hands over my ass and thighs, his thick fingers grazing my pussy lips over and over. Slowly, even without pain, I start to come down from the near hysteria. I tuck my face into his calf muscle and try to hide how embarrassed I feel about my reaction.
But he just holds me, gently caressing my skin, his thick fingers finally pushing into my pussy, giving me something else to think about, something else to focus on. Soon my arousal overwhelms all other thoughts, my need for orgasm once again rising. He adds another finger, still finger-fucking me slowly, almost absently, but I can feel his hard cock pressed against my hip so I know he’s aroused with me, by me.
I sigh, feeling a warm rush of contentment that comes just from sharing this quiet moment with him.
“Are you okay, little sub?” he asks in a whisper as he finally sits me up on his lap and pushes the hair from my eyes.
“Yes, I think so, Sir,” I say in a soft voice. Somehow the moment feels too intimate to use normal voices.
“Good girl,” he says as he cuddles me close.
* * * *
Doug held his trainee sub tight and silently called himself every nasty name under the sun. It was natural for Alicia to associate her orgasm with getting permission from her Dom first. It was why submissives were actually trained.
But he knew that women who lived a vanilla life sometimes had a difficult time separating the Dom-sub relationship from other meaningful relationships in their history. Alicia wasn’t thinking of him as her Dom. She was seeing him as Doug first and her Dom second.
It was very likely that this latest panic attack had come from wondering what would happen if he was no longer around. Their contract was for only two weeks. She already associated her orgasms with his permission. But when her training was finished, there would be other Doms. Like he’d done with all the others, he’d train her, teach her everything she needed to know, and then introduce her to the Doms at the club. Most of the subs he’d trained had gone on to find permanent loving Dom-sub relationships.
He pulled his sub closer, his muscles trembling just a tiny bit, his heartbeat no longer quite as calm as he thought about losing her. Damn.
Alicia already had a Dom waiting for her. She just didn’t know it yet.
But it would be a very good idea for him to remember.
Chapter Ten
I feel safe and content lying here in my Dom’s arms. Even the panic that drilled through me a few minutes ago is just a vague memory. I’m still surprised by my unexpected reaction to what was probably just a random thought, but I can honestly say that I’m no longer embarrassed. That was the closest I’ve come to having a full-blown panic attack since I met Doug, and yet he didn’t turn away. He’s still holding me, grounding me, keeping me safe as I find my equilibrium. I’m actually feeling, for the first time since signing our contract, that I made the right decision to come here. Whatever else happens, I’m already coping better just knowing someone shares my secret.
And I didn’t need harsh pain this time to stop the panic.
Doug lifts out of the chair and places me back in my own. He smiles and touches his fingertips to my face before pressing an affectionate kiss to my forehead. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he says gruffly.
I nod and reach for my water glass. Hell, with all the crying I’ve done since stepping in the door, I’m liable to dehydrate. Doug comes back into the room with a facecloth and clean towel and nods in approval as I drink down the contents of the glass. I reach out my arms to take the towels from him, but he shakes his head, drags his chair closer to mine, and then sits down. I close my eyes as he gently moves the cool washcloth over my face. My eyes feel so raw and itchy I don’t even want to imagine what I must look like.
Eventually he pats my skin dry.
“Better?” he asks with a soft smile.
I nod. “Thank you, Sir.”
“You’re very welcome, sub.”
I notice that he changed his shirt while he was out of the room, and can only imagine how much of a mess I made. I am so not a pretty crier.
He searches my face and for a moment I feel his uncertainty. He’s always so confident, seemingly larger than life, and I forget sometimes that he’s still just a man—no superpowers at all.
“Are you okay?” I ask, wanting to help him.
He seems surprised by my question but gives me a quick smile.
“I’m fine,” he says, “but sometimes even I forget I don’t have all the answers.” He shakes his head as if he can’t quite believe he said that out loud. I want to hug him, assure him he’s not alone. “You look tired.” It’s obvious that he’s changing the subject and I feel a little cheated. I know the premise of a Dom-sub relationship, but there’s no reason why I can’t offer to help a fellow human being. He looks away from me, almost like he doesn’t want me to see what he’s thinking. “We should both get an early night.”
I shake my head quickly, but he grabs my chin and traces the dark circles under my eyes with his finger.
“I didn’t sleep very well last night,” I say defensively, “but only because I was excited.” I manage to add the word “Sir” when he raises his eyebrow again. Damn, I need to remember that pa
rt better. We’ve spent the past two weeks slipping into and out of the Dom-sub protocols, but I have agreed to follow them twenty-four-seven while our contract is in force. “Sir, I promise to try harder. Lachlan hasn’t even called yet. Can we please just sit and watch television together for a while?”
He laughs softly, and I’m uncertain what it is that he finds funny, but then he nods his agreement, stands up, and holds his hand out for me to take. I slip my hand into his and sigh softly as he leads me to the living area. I’m not surprised when he indicates that I should sit on the floor at his feet—it was one of the things we discussed when we negotiated our contract—but I am grateful for the cushion he gives me to sit on. It might be summer, but sitting bare-assed on cold tiles just doesn’t appeal.
Doug settles into his seat and urges me to rest my head against his thigh. I get comfortable between his knees and am actually surprised by how right it feels. He flicks through the stations until he finds something that catches his interest. I’m not fussed at what we watch, but since I’m not given the choice anyway, I simply relax into the feel of him surrounding me and close my eyes, quite content.
“Wake up, little sub,” a voice says as a hand sweeps over my face lovingly. “Alicia, your phone’s ringing.”
A part of me doesn’t care. I’m sleepy and content and don’t want reality to intrude, but then I realize the most likely identity of my caller and my eyes fly open as I search for the source of the ringing. Doug hands me my cell phone and then leaves the room.
“Hello,” I finally manage in a sleep-roughened voice as I thumb the “answer” button.
“Alicia?” Lachlan asks, sounding mad. “Are you all right?”
I’m a little surprised by his vehemence, but it does have the effect of bringing me fully awake.
“Of course I’m all right. I’m just tired.”